“Death is something so strange, that, notwithstanding all experience, one thinks it impossible for it to seize a beloved object; it always presents itself as an incredible and unexpected event; and this transition, from an existence we know, to one of which we know nothing, is something so violent that it cannot take place without the greatest shock to survivors.”
Who has not experienced, to some extent, the feelings thus expressed by Goethe? The immediate results of death, no less than the actual event, excite the most perplexing and distressing ideas. All is unwonted and unnatural. One’s thoughts are compelled to take a new and strange turn. They are occupied henceforth, about that which was, and is not; it is the “history of a life,” not a living, sentient, beloved being, that occupies them now. Fancy, having tried in vain to “paint the moment after death,” gives place to Memory and Love, which busily go o’er the past, and trace, again and again, each step.
One glance at the forsaken “tabernacle,” lately the dwelling-place of that soul beloved, renews the sad conviction, that what you once had, you have no more, and ne’er can have again. Then, after a time, the sarcophagus—the chest, that shuts in and confines what loved to be free, and would not be held in durance;—it is all unnatural! the result of some infringement of the original intent.
So felt the writer when next she entered the house on the Castle Meadow; now no longer Mrs. Opie’s house; for she lay dead therein. Yes! she lay dead; placed in her coffin, in the lower chamber, beneath the one in which she had breathed her last; surrounded by the portraits of her friends, which, hanging upon the walls of the room, used so often to attract her notice, and win from her some expression of remembrance and regard. Men of all views, political and religious, were there; all known, and having earned a niche there, by some superiority of natural or acquired excellences. There Lafayette, Cooper, David, Madame de Staël, and others, of her foreign friends, hung side by side. There J. J. Gurney and his brother, Elizabeth Fry and Lucy Aggs, and close by them the Bishops of Norwich and Durham, and Professors Sedgwick and Whewell; there the poets and statesmen, whose genius had charmed her; and last, though not the least, Mrs. Siddons, in her glory, as Queen Catherine.
It was an affecting and instructive sight to look upon—very sad; and yet, after a time, reason and faith suggested soothing and happy reflections. She, who lay there, had died in a good old age, full of years and honour; had finished her earthly course in peace, and now, the end was known, and all was “well.” She had died in the faith and hope of the gospel; her feet had not fallen, for God had held up her goings; and her spirit, though no longer permitted to sojourn among the living, had joined the “great crowd of witnesses,” which is ever multiplying its hosts, and securely awaiting its ultimate completion and triumph.
The 9th of December was the day appointed for the funeral of Mrs. Opie; she was interred in the Friends’ burying ground, at the Gildencroft; in the same grave with her father. About two hundred persons, assembled in solemn silence, stood there to meditate: one voice alone was heard; that of a venerable Friend, who uttered a few simple scriptural words. It seemed strange to miss from among the sorrowing group around, so many who had loved and honoured her. But the eye had only to glance over that green enclosure, and one was reminded that they lay there, beside and around her. Rich, indeed, is that small plot of ground. The good, the honoured, the lovely, and beloved, lie there;—some of the best of men and saints, whose prayers drew blessings down from heaven,—awaiting the day when “the secrets of all hearts shall be made known.” It is a hallowed spot; consecrated to holy memories.
Should any wanderer, at some future day, desire to visit the grave of Amelia Opie, he will find, at the extreme left side of the ground, beneath an elm tree that overshadows the wall, a small slab, bearing the names of James Alderson and Amelia Opie, with the dates of their births and deaths.
Among those present on this occasion, was one, long and well-known to Mrs. Opie, and of whom she has spoken in terms of warm praise, in one of her notes; Mr. Hodgkin, a minister of the Friends, who, addressing those around, invited them to accompany him to the Meeting House; where, after a short time spent in silence and in prayer, he rose, and spoke, in words very pleasant and judicious, of the dear departed friend, whom they had lost. He had known her, he said, from his own earlier days, and when she was very different from what she afterwards became. He believed that the ruling principle in her mind, and that which, being implanted there by Divine grace, had remained the dominant one in her soul, was the love of Christ; constrained by the sweet influence of which, she had been enabled to maintain much consistent Christian deportment, amid snares and temptations of peculiar fascination for one, endowed by nature, and trained by early habit, as she had been.
Much more he added, of a nature to impress his hearers with a deep sense of thankfulness for the Divine goodness, and to urge them to pursue, with humble and pious zeal, the path of Christian devotedness and obedience.
It may seem natural and desirable that a few words should be said touching the personal appearance of the subject of these memoirs, during the latter period of her life.—How difficult, and indeed impossible it is, to satisfy yourself, when attempting to portray the form and features of those you know most intimately, and have been constantly in the habit of seeing! This you feel in trying to describe the members of your own family; in the mind’s eye their image lives, ’tis true; but it is rather as a consciousness; something, as it were, that is interwoven with the secret and hidden ideas of your soul. In a degree, this is the case with all those most familiar to you; and perhaps the reason is, that the whole idea of their personality has been formed by degrees—shade after shade, as the events of passing years have left their impress upon them.